As long as this is happening because people spent the last two years digging themselves out of consumer debt and are ready to spend again, then this is a good thing.

Also: cable is still ridiculously overpriced. When these jerkwads come to terms with the fact that they have to compete with Netflix, I will subscribe again. For $80/month Dish Network, Time Warner, and all the others can bite me. I have more movies than I can ever watch and dozens of tv series I've been meaning to catch up on at the tip of my finger for $8.99. I just started Walking Dead last night, and that should keep me going for the next couple of weeks.

hitlersbrain: That's all that will really get us moving again. Saving your money in a bank just means that the executives of the bank can say 'poof' and your money is gone. You know, 'cause regulations are bad.

Ever hear of the FDIC? The only bad part is that my savings account netted me shiat for returns. Your money in your bank is insured (up to $250,000 per bank IIRC)

Meh. I get the Economist and the New Yorker. I enjoy the paper copy for just stuffing in my pocket or throwing around and not worrying about it. Plus I fly a lot so it's nice to have something to read while the plane is putzing around the tarmac and I'm banned from using my Kindle.

Julie Cochrane: URAPNIS: Sooo what exactly are we supposed to do with our extra money?
Savings account?
CD?
Investments?
70" LED television?

How YOU doin?

/oblig
//couldn't help it
///aren't we all supposed to be gold-diggers
////LOL
//Buy my books.

Oh, I'll buy your books, alright..........

Probably the guys complaining about magazines pay $200/month for cable.

"But I needs mah HBO!"

I have the feeling if you made a Venn Diagram of people who have magazine subscriptions and those who read in the bathroom, there would be a large overlap.

/plus they make good gifts for pre-teens and teenagers
//Proud member of the Jelly of the Month Club

approves

Hyjamon: I have the feeling if you made a Venn Diagram of people who have magazine subscriptions and those who read in the bathroom, there would be a large overlap.

It's either that or the shampoo/shaving cream/toothpaste.
I prefer the magazine.

We finally splurged on health care after not having any for nearly 3 years. My wife got a retail job making $10 an hour and I rejoined the military (National Guard) because of the affordable insurance.

Am I in the 1% yet??

What am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?

Bob16: Here in the burbs on NYC the economy is worse than ever.

The number of jobs in the paper has been pitiful since sept 2008 but the past couple weeks has been much worse than usual.

Looking for jobs in the newspaper? I think I found your problem.

Erm I'm still living like a hobo. I have eaten only black beans and rice this week with various veggies from the garden.

/grad life
//one day I will make money

URAPNIS: Hyjamon: I have the feeling if you made a Venn Diagram of people who have magazine subscriptions and those who read in the bathroom, there would be a large overlap.

It's either that or the shampoo/shaving cream/toothpaste.
I prefer the magazine.

Good to know I am not the only person who has thought: "hmm, i didn't know the active ingredients in Head & Shoulders treat the cause of dandruff on the scalp. These ingredients include pyrithione zinc (PTZ) and selenium sulfide."

Hyjamon: I have the feeling if you made a Venn Diagram of people who have magazine subscriptions and those who read in the bathroom, there would be a large overlap.

/plus they make good gifts for pre-teens and teenagers
//Proud member of the Jelly of the Month Club
[rickthegreat.files.wordpress.com image 240x240]
approves

what's wrong with a little bathroom reading? i have this in there right now:



pun was not originally intended.

Maybe subby is buying expensive latte's and renewing magazine subscriptions.

I know many folks who have cut gas, oil, propane, electric, food and clothing and continue to look for new ways to cut even more.

A 4%-6% drop in savings techniques over two years is "Americans are spending again"?

Stupid article is stupid.

Hyjamon: Good to know I am not the only person who has thought: "hmm, i didn't know the active ingredients in Head & Shoulders treat the cause of dandruff on the scalp. These ingredients include pyrithione zinc (PTZ) and selenium sulfide."

How do you know that? You guys don't know ANYTHING!

fireclown: since 2008, I've gotten my credit card balances to zero and paid off a car. I am continuing to make a car payment to myself to prefund the next car. I'm going to drive the one I have until the wheels fall off, and I'm hoping to pay for the next one in cash. I managed to put aside a household emergency fund which has been come in handy twice.

/C financial SB

So much this. I've paid off tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt since 2008. Last one will be gone next month. Working on the cars after that and the emergency fund is very cheap peace of mind.

/no cable, home phone, etc.
//need to re-evaluate the work paid for cell phone plan.

thornhill: I subscribe to The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

The New Yorker farking rules! Although I'll admit sometimes the humor can be excessively dry.

I subscribe to them and National Geographic. I've got 3 years worth so far. My goal is to have decades worth on a huge bookshelf by the time I'm an old man, and to have actually read them all (not just looked at the pictures).

oneodd1: So much this. I've paid off tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt since 2008. Last one will be gone next month. Working on the cars after that and the emergency fund is very cheap peace of mind.


Preach on.

I read magazines when I cook bacon. I don't want grease splatters on my phone.

Starfly: hitlersbrain: That's all that will really get us moving again. Saving your money in a bank just means that the executives of the bank can say 'poof' and your money is gone. You know, 'cause regulations are bad.

Ever hear of the FDIC? The only bad part is that my savings account netted me shiat for returns. Your money in your bank is insured (up to $250,000 per bank IIRC)

So you pay yourself back with your own tax dollars. Brilliant! I'm sure there is a bunch legaleze bullcrap that allows banks to steal it legally (fines, etc..) or there will be shortly. Middle class and poor people have terrible lobbyists. Once we finally get rid of all these regulations we can go back to being the country our forefathers wanted... a feudal hegemony.

Jim.Casy: thornhill: I subscribe to The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

The New Yorker farking rules! Although I'll admit sometimes the humor can be excessively dry.

I subscribe to them and National Geographic. I've got 3 years worth so far. My goal is to have decades worth on a huge bookshelf by the time I'm an old man, and to have actually read them all (not just looked at the pictures).

Another thing that I like about the The New Yorker is that they give you free access to their digital archive that includes every single issue ever, so I feel no pressure to hold on to old issues (and with the tablet app, you can keep issues on your tablet as long as you want -- very useful when traveling).

I had hoped that learning the benefits of savings, the risk of buying on credit, and perhaps realizing that you don't have to have the very best and newest and most expensive piece of consumer junk right this second(!) might be one positive aspect of this economic collapse.

Sigh.

fireclown: oneodd1: So much this. I've paid off tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt since 2008. Last one will be gone next month. Working on the cars after that and the emergency fund is very cheap peace of mind.

[www.strangecosmos.com image 420x396]
Preach on.

Great! Now just don't get too sick... or too hurt in an accident. All that savings will disappear when some doctor says 'poof' and your practically worthless, unregulated insurance company decides your cheaper to them dead.

Magazine... Magazine... Is that like those old paper copies of the internet from two years ago I see when I go to the doctor?

I've been running 0 debt for the last 5 years and now my credit card companies are sending me reminders about how much open credit I have.

Alexander Mouse: This Old House, great magazine esp. if you have an old house.

Yeah, but you don't get the awesome Boston accents in the mag.

Anyway, I thought the economy hit the crapper long before 2009. Once the bubble burst on the technology/internet windfall of the 90's, things weren't that great.

thornhill: i upped my meds-up yours: magazine subscriptions? Nobody I know subscribes to a magazine today unless they have been reading it since the days of movable type. Usually with bifocals.

I subscribe to The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

The New Yorker is the best journalism out there. The dig deeper than anyone else and there articles are more entertaining than most of what's out there on TV. A lot of the content also informs my professional life. Further, at no extra cost they give you their tablet app. It costs me like $70/year, or $1.50 per issue.

I could probably go without the The Atlantic, but the politically reporting tends to be quite good.

If nothing else, the New Yorker or The Atlantic makes good decoration for your coffee table as a single guy. Girls assume you have a lot of disposable income and read a lot if you have magazines lying around.

That being said, in college Playboy ran a promotion where you got 12 issues for $12. -Best $12 I've spent. Yes, yes internet porn is free, but *every* guy will pick up an issue of Playboy and pretend to read the articles.

Can't count the number of friends who'd drop by to say "hi" and pick up my latest magazine when I was in college. -It also helped me find a bisexual girlfriend too (crazily enough she decided that if I left the magazine out when girls came over, I must have some *amazing* balls).

/stupid me forgot to renew at the same rate in time and thus I only received one year at that incredible price and I was too cheap to pay the *real* price.
//not that I'd have it now, I'm a bit too old and married for that stuff to matter now, but if you are still in college and come across the same deal, spend the money, it's worth it.

Gabrielmot: Girls assume you have a lot of disposable income and read a lot if you have magazines lying around.

I seriously doubt that. Magazines are not expensive. A yearly subscription is less than the cost of a nice dinner.

dukeblue219: jayhawk88: Who the hell orders a magazine at this point? "Oh please, send me a half pound of garbage every month! And let me pay you for the privilege!"

I subscribe to several science and aviation magazines. You're right that most of it is garbage and ads, but there's always a few interesting articles, and when you can easily get them for about $1 an issue who cares? I find flipping through a magazine on the couch every so often to be kind of nice, even if I could go sit at the computer and read the same thing online.

And the fashion ads are great for cutting out eyes. You just don't get that hands on approach with the internet.

Rik01: BTW, I was unaware of an alternative to cable or dish TV. Please explain more.

There's this thing called the Internet, and another thing called over the air broadcast TV...

Nightsweat: Rik01: BTW, I was unaware of an alternative to cable or dish TV. Please explain more.

There's this thing called the Internet, and another thing called over the air broadcast TV...


Also, books. Free from the library. Radio, free from the air. Do something with your hands, make something, garden, whittle, draw, etc. TV is a big stinking pile of fake horseshiat. In fact real horseshiat would be better to have than tv, as you could actually use it in a garden and grow some food.



I'm cheap as hell, and I'm not gonna buy this anymore!!!

Public Savant: Am I the only one who wonders how the hell they managed to get un-crumpled bills into the piggy-bank in the first place?

[www.mnn.com image 530x300]

Or is this one of those GMO hog banks with superpowers?

Your brain must be a VEeeeeeEEEEeeeery interesting place to live in. Who even notices things like that??

Ha ha, I'm totally one of those people, at the same time that I am incorrigibly cheap and frugal in most other areas! I get coffee most mornings (although it's $1.94 7-Eleven coffee, and I have chocolate and peppermint syrup at work so that at least the rest of my daily coffee is awesome and doesn't cost $5.50 a pop like at Starbucks), and subscribe to two magazines as gifts. The magazines pretty much contradict each other though - one is "Real Simple" which every time puts me in a consumerist frenzy (the beaded hair band! the dress! the clothes organizers!), and the other is Mother Earth News, which... I don't know what it makes me want to do, but I think about diy solar panels and raising chickens and homesteading and humanure and stuff, which I pretty much the opposite of consumerism I think.

I do have to say though, that brownbagging lunch - even if you buy pre-packaged single-serving things like Babybel cheese or single-serve hummus - saves serious cash. Which you can then blow on fancy coffee and magazines, and maybe even a beaded hair band.

since everyone is csb'ing their savings, I stopped eating out for breakfast or lunch at work. Cook 1 or 2 big meals a week for leftovers. Use some coupons when I shop but mostly just store brands. Got a car with better gas milage. Got the wife to stop drinking soda which i had done 2 yrs ago. Cut cable bill and paid all other credit cards off.

My lunch is 1.87 for box of eight. I eat a pack of peanut butter crackers for lunch and read a book.

I doubt my subscription to The Week makes me a spendthrift. It's a nice summation of news and its coverage around the world, plus the real estate section helps me keep focused on saving for a downpayment.

/also reads Every Day with Rachel Ray
//don't judge
///it was free after I spent some credit card points on Art.com, I swear

hitlersbrain: Great! Now just don't get too sick... or too hurt in an accident. All that savings will disappear when some doctor says 'poof' and your practically worthless, unregulated insurance company decides your cheaper to them dead.

My insurance is pretty good. It's been one of the better things in my financial landscape.

The economy is actually at least as bad as 2009. It APPEARS to be slightly better, but that's only because Obama is blowing trillions of dollars of money borrowed from China and other countries. I guess he wants us to end up like Greece.

Any chance we can sell DC and Obama to the Chinese to get back some of that money?

NSS.

X-boxershorts: j0ndas: The economy is actually at least as bad as 2009. It APPEARS to be slightly better, but that's only because Obama is blowing trillions of dollars of money borrowed from China and other countries. I guess he wants us to end up like Greece.

Any chance we can sell DC and Obama to the Chinese to get back some of that money?

Do you even have any clue who holds the vast majority of American debt?

(I doubt it)

And do you realize our debt from WWII was actually slightly higher (compared to GDP) than it is today?

We even implemented an additional tax to help pay for WWII.

Did we implement a tax to fight the war on terror? What's that? We cut a TRILLION from our tax revenue and launched a land war in Asia?

Well, shiver me timbers....THAT'S WHY WE'RE BROKE

Idiots like you think that taxes are for buying welfare queens their Cadillacs.

Seriously...was your head stuffed so far up your ass for the last 10 years you think those polyps are microphones? Seriously, you're just spouting shiat dude.

So funny, so true.

Love.

;)

X-boxershorts: Idiots like you think that taxes are for buying welfare queens their Cadillacs.


no that's what whoring pays for. welfare just pays the rent on the whorehouse, and buys the grape drank.

X-boxershorts: Question....what's the average duration of any given welfare case in the US as of 2009?


Ok, what is the average duration of any given welfare case in the US as of 2009? Life long? A very short time? What's your point?